With 15 of 16 games in for week 13, I’m going to drop off this week’s symmetrical power ratings a day early.I’ll add in the last game’s results tomorrow.I expect little change after the Monday night game.

The beauty of my type of symmetrical game ratings is that they don’t change that much from week to week.

Albert Breer’s Boston Globe power ratings are shifted from week to week by who the opponent is playing, and so they bounce up and down as each team plays good and bad opponents.Also, I think they overweight the really old games 13 weeks ago. That's not who will show up next week.

Jeff Sagarin’s pure points ratings are closer to my ratings.Sagarin’s system doesn’t account for certain teams playing more home games versus away games at some point in the season.He looks at the win-loss record of the opponents, but doesn’t look at the relative strength of a division or of a conference.Teams in a strong division (or in a weak division) tend to play each other a lot.Finally, Sagarin doesn’t trim out various meaningless points at the game’s end.

As always, my symmetrical ratings must be tempered with opinions of a team’s asymmetrical game abilities (good hail mary and clock management teams), of recent injury reports, and of suspected zebra prejudices (see “Personal Foul”, a book by a mob-corrupted NBA referee).I have scant statistical data to use on asymmetrical play and no data on the other issues.

Last week the Saints struggled mightily against an ok team.Their rating dropped.The Pats cruised in with a two score lead, not too bad at home against an ok team, nothing spectacular for them.The Colts also cruised in at home against an ok team, nothing spectacular, meets expectations from last week.

On the other end, St. Louis is bouncing on the 0 wins out of 16 line.Not good unless there’s a really good #1 pick in next April’s draft.Detroit isn’t much better.

As I've said before Paul_K, there is only one way to defend your power ranking system; does it predict outright wins (ignoring the spread) better than the other ranking systems. There is no way you can argue otherwise any system that places the Pats on top; especially above two undefeated teams. Well, you can argue it, but nobody will accept it.

I'm inching closer towards coming up with a power ranking systems that ranks the power ranking systems lol.

After checking out your earlier power rankings I now have a greater respect for the Symmetrical rankings. The only problem I have is that Oakland should be bumped up ahead of Detroit but as I've said before I won't argue with the numbers because that's a fight I just can't win.Keep up the good work Paulie

The fallacy of this entire system is that it assumes the 4th quarter NEVER matters.

How in the world can that be?

Whether accurate or not, this site indicates 46% of all games are decided by 7 points or less. 23+% are decided by 3 points or less. I don't know how anyone can suggest that the 4th quarter does not matter when nearly half of all games are decided by one score or less.

IMO, any game (in general) within a 14 point margin is a game still within reach for the losing team which adds another 20% to the scenario. So 2/3 of all games are decided by a margin within reach for the losing team.

The fallacy of this entire system is that it assumes the 4th quarter NEVER matters. Posted by underdoggg

I changed it around. At this point I measure symmetrical and slightly symmetrical games. I have now defined the limits of a symmetrical game as a game within one 8 point score 5 minutes from the end of regular game play, within two scores 10 minutes from the end, within 3 scores 15 minutes from the end, (rarely applicable) within 4 scores 20 minutes from the end, and tied after the 2 minute warning. As soon as the game score crosses any of these limits, by my rules the symmetrical game ends and the asymmetrical game begins.

I'm still occasionally excluding a minute or two of symmetrical play, but it's much better than excluding the entire fourth quarter. Most games cover 2/3 of the fourth quarter. My goal is first to exclude truly tickytack points, the touchdowns scored with ten seconds left in blowouts.

Whether accurate or not, this site indicates 46% of all games are decided by 7 points or less. 23+% are decided by 3 points or less.

The average Vegas point spread is no different. I predict average point spreads, not variances which can be huge on any given Sunday.

IMO, any game (in general) within a 14 point margin is a game still within reach for the losing team which adds another 20% to the scenario. Posted by underdoggg

I just watched Carolina trailing the Patriots by 10 points with less than 5 minutes to go. Oh yeah they had a chance, maybe 1 in 50? 1 in 100? With the ball in their possession, they diddled away some of the remaining time with 5 yard passes and runs, they went for a fourth and long and failed, they tossed an interception. These things happen in an asymmetric game.

The numbers are not offended, at least. There may or may not be an element of statistical truth in the numbers. The Patriots' high ranking may be an outlier. For that matter, the NFL win-loss standings may be an outlier too, nice for the winning teams but not completely representative of future performance in January.Posted by Paul_K

Paul, you and your power rankings are tarded. Listen to the majority of your fellow Pats fans. The sky is falling, BB is losing it and they're just hoping to make the playoffs (Look at the posts, these are the opinions of Pats fans that post here, not mine). But you, you Paul, are gonna ride the Homer train all the way aren't ya? I bet that after the Super Bowl, even if the Pats don't win, you'll still have them ranked #1.

I know you think you're smart but lets go back to 1st grade. 13 wins are more than 8 and 5 losses are more than 0. There is NO way that you can say that the Pats are the best team in the NFL!! I'm not saying that the Colts are (they've been a tad less than impressive lately) but the Pats most definitely are not and to say so proves that you and your power rankings don't know squat.

This is a final with Monday night’s game included, also the Sunday night Philadelphia game was excluded from the last interim rating.I don’t like to see St. Louis drop below 0 victories out of 16 but, in order to roughly predict point spreads, that’s a gauge of how bad the team is.